I have been meaning to write this post for a long time now, but held off until The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest*, the final installment of Steig Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy was finally published in the US. Starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I have been completely obsessed with this series—so much so that rather than wait for the US publication, I tracked down a copy of the UK edition at a New Delhi bookstore in December.

If you haven’t read these books, you must. You really must. Lisbeth Salander, the “girl” of the titles, is without question one of the most original—and kickass—literary heroines of all time, and the novels are as brilliant and iconoclastic as she is. But beyond that, they’re an extraordinary high-water mark in commercial fiction because, as Chip McGrath of the New York Timeswrote: “[The Millenium Trilogy] also has an outspoken feminist subtext, hardly a typical feature of crime novels.”

This is not your typical “crime novel”, with a dick-swinging, hard-boiled, hard-drinking man with a gun fighting off other tough guys. Instead:

The villains are “men who hate women” (the title given the first novel in Sweden, but fortunately changed): rapists, child abusers, sex traffickers, even killers of women.

Yesterday I saw a story at U.S. News & World Report entitled “10 Things We Can’t Live Without.” After a little story about the riches-to-rags-to-maybe-some-riches story of a young woman, it lists those titular ten things.

Portable Computers

High-speed Internet Access

Smartphones

Education

Movies

TV

Music Downloads

Pets

Booze

Coffee

It’s not totally clear how or if these are the “top 10 things,” but they only partially reflect my values. I agree with #s 1 and 2, big-time, and #8 (meow!), for sure. Booze, of the drink-at-home variety, is probably also up there. We used to live a super-cool, bar-and-restaurant-filled neighborhood, but our new place is in something of a social wasteland (our proximity to BeckySharper is the exception), so we have definitely taken to happy hours at home.

I’m over non-violence, as a political philosophy. Advocating non-violent resistance to injustice is either a luxury or something that’s undertaken by those who have superhuman tolerance for violent oppression.

It is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix. A Saudi religious policeman (representing the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) busted a 20-something couple for being together in a park in Al-Mubarraz recently, and got a righteous beat down in return–from the woman.

“For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop,” according to The Jerusalem Post. That strikes me as a little odd, and I suspect it could be code for “knocked out with a baton.” But anyway, the woman let it rip on the religious policeman, hitting him repeatedly and leaving him to be taken to the hospital for the resulting bruises. Should the woman be charged, she could face a lengthy prison term as well as lashings for assaulting a government representative.

Because crushing daily oppression is an abstraction rather than a reality for most of them, some feminists felt torn about this story. See: this comment thread on Jezebel. I’m annoyed Katy even used the words “While we don’t usually condone violence …” in her post. Over and over people whisper “Violence is always wrong, but …” before they dare express support for–or pride in–this brave woman.

IT’S OKAY! Depending on what really happened to her companion, this burst of oh-so-terrible violence could have been self-defense. I don’t particularly care, because I am not conflicted about the oppressed using violent force to overthrow their oppressors. More often than not, it is the only thing they understand. In the case of this woman, I am not conflicted about the oppressed exploding with violent rage at her oppressor after one too many boots have stepped on her neck. I don’t know if this woman’s actions will spark a rebellion or if it’s just an isolated incident I read about online. I do know not everyone is privileged enough to sit around quoting Gandhi at people in situations like the one women in Saudi are facing.

Although I got back from a short jaunt up to the Catskills last night (fun, but I tripped while hiking and my shin looks like hell) I quickly got all tense again from two impending deadlines today. I mentioned this to an internet friend, and she obliged me with the below which, since then, I have been unable to quit watching. Seriously, guys, I’m one step away from the Clockwork Orange here. Let’s see if it has the same effect on others.

Becky covered this story a while back, and while I find the trend ridiculous, ugly, and did I mention ridiculous?, and ugly?, this take on it almost makes it worthwhile as a faux-trend.

Christwire.org, in case you haven’t heard of it already, is a spoof site, but a brilliantly executed one, blending brimstone condemnation of and prurient interest in pop culture in a remarkable balance.

Extra super bonus: the comment thread. Hooo-doggie. Actually, AVOID! AVOID! AVOID! It’s a horror show, as the people who don’t get that the site is a joke are mocked in increasingly violent, sexist terms. I’d rather get vajazzled.

A girlfriend recently brought a stack of supposedly cute’n'funny books as a gift for a bridal shower I attended. One of them was Porn for Women, whose jacket read:

Prepare to enter a fantasy world. A world where clothes get folded just so and delicious dinners await. Give the fairer sex what they really want beautiful PG photos of hunky men cooking, listening, asking for directions, accompanied by steamy captions: “I love a clean house!” or “As long as I have two legs to walk on, you’ll never take out the trash.” Now this is porn that will leave women begging for more!

Give me a fucking break. Even with tongue planted firmly in cheek, this is a dismal, dated, patronizing, heteronormative sight-gag that reinforces the same tired gender roles it pokes fun at. Ooh, a man’s folding laundry! It’s so hot and crazy! Tee hee! And even worse…there’s a whole series of these books.

This morning I became one of the last people on the Internet to watch the video of five young girls dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” at a World of Dance competition. The YouTube video of their performance has sparked outrage among people who think the costumes and choreography were too provocative for nine year olds. Everyone from Inside Edition to Good Morning America is replaying segments of the dance and asking “Won’t someone please think of the children!?”

I’m not fond of the girls’ costumes, which resemble something you’d buy at Trashy Lingerie. Simple leotards would have sufficed. But I am sort of surprised this particular video has caused such a controversy. There are countless videos of little kids dancing to “Single Ladies” out there, and plenty of them involve hip-swiveling and the caressing of non-existent curves. The combination of sexy costumes + adult approval + large audience must be what did it.

Still, I’m far more disturbed by the reactions to the performance than I am by the performance itself. Commenters predict that the dancers will become pregnant very shortly and accuse the girls’ parents of failing to protect their daughters from pedophiles. Many invoke JonBenét Ramsey in their freak-outs. Some are calling for the state of California to press charges. Good grief, people! The performance was risque, but responses like these are indicative of rape culture.

Pedophiles are sexually attracted to children, not little people dressed up like adults. Your child in sneakers and overalls is not less appealing to a pedophile than a child “dressed like a prostitute.” Blaming children’s clothing for child sex abuse may make you feel less vulnerable as a parent but it has no basis in reality.

And the JonBenét thing … I don’t even … Talk about scare-mongering. Authorities don’t even know who killed that girl. But speaking of JonBenét, I have never witnessed such outrage aimed at child beauty pageants, which are 100 times more disturbing than the “Single Ladies” dance. Maybe the folks worrying about pedophiles are just as irrationally worried about predators watching pageant girls, though. I can’t say for sure.

I’m finished with teaching until August, and am looking forward (mostly) to turning my attention back to my own work.

But before I do, I want to post a quick hit about a college-related website that just came to my attention: College ACB (Anonymous Confession Board). I’m declining to link to it, because after spending a little time there, I feel comfortable declaring it a cesspool of sexist/racist/homo- and trans-phobic hatred that deserves only your derision.

College ACB is selling itself as the inheritor to Juicy Campus, which, if you’re unfamiliar, was at least as bad of a college gossip site, focusing largely on campus greek life, and which was shut down early in 2009 for “lack of revenues” (although it might have been sucked back into the bowels of hell). It’s also selling itself as an “alternative” to the superficial, mean-spirited bitchery of other such sites.

This weekend I got an e-mail from Harpyness reader Melody, who pointed me to a recent article in Slate entitled “Why Is a Former Sex Blogger Rethinking Virginity?“. I was wondering what you think of it? Melody asked, so I read the article, by Double XX writer Jessica Grose. That byline immediately raised my antennae—more about that shortly—and I could see why Melody had mixed feelings about the article, which was about a recent conference at Harvard called “Rethinking Virginity.” The conference was organized by Lena Chen, a Harvard senior and former sex blogger. Grose describes Chen as:

…part of a handful of women bloggers who are sobering up quickly after their youthful indiscretions, and lately, the sober seems far more prominent than the indiscreet.

A brief recap of Grose’s sex-blogger tales of woe:

Chen started “Sex and the Ivy” in 2006, at the beginning of her sophomore year. The initial response to Chen was positive, and she felt exhilarated by the experience—freshman girls looked up to her, lots of people were reading her posts, and she was getting some freelance work out of it. At the time, she thought, “I was well-aware that my subject matter was slightly edgy and my reputation slightly soiled, but hardly unsalvageable, nothing a book deal couldn’t fix.”

Soon there was an awful backlash, which included a deranged ex-boyfriend leaking nude photos of Chen and many deeply cruel jabs from her pals at Harvard in the comments section of her blog and on IvyGate. “I always thought that people here are more progressive, but I think sexuality is an exception,” Chen told me. “They were saying I was a slut, I was a whore, but only behind my back…”

The resulting trauma gave Chen panic attacks and led her to take time off from Harvard. She stopped blogging about her sex life in explicit detail on Sex and the Ivy…and instead of referring to herself as a “bleeding heart nympho,” Chen now goes by the label “third wave radical Marxist feminist.”

This past week Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer signed a new racist-as-hell bill aimed at ending ethnic studies classes in Tucson public schools. These elective classes in Mexican-American history and literature, plus African-American literature, are open to all students, although not surprisingly, most of those who take them belong to the ethnic group being studied. The signing of the bill was a particular victory for Tom Horne, Arizona’s superintendent for public instruction (and Boss Hogg look-alike), who has led the campaign against their “destructive ethnic chauvinism.”

Tom’s delusional argument boils down to this: We shouldn’t teach students “the downer” that they are oppressed. Why is it that this argument is always used by white men? Tom goes on to quote testimony from one student who declared, “Before I took this [ethnic studies] course, I didn’t realize I was oppressed. Now I realize I’m oppressed.” And this would be called self-actualization? Empowerment? Not in Tom Horne’s Arizona! It’s a downer.

Yeah, too much knowledge makes you sad, particularly the knowledge that you’re the victim of discrimination and oppression. What I find particularly impressive is the bullshit way Tom Horne frames the bill as a service to Latinos. Ignorance is bliss! Tom doesn’t want people to know they’re oppressed—because he doesn’t want them to feel bad about it! What a racist paternalist pinche cabrón thoughtful gentleman!